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U.S. stocks raced to a record close for the second day in a row, shrugging off a weak wholesale inflation data while renewed hopes of tax reform lifted sentiment. TheDJIA closed higher at 22158.18. The S&P 500 closed 0.08% higher while the Nasdaq Composite closed at 6460.19, up 0.09%. U.S. Treasuries continued a sharp decline for the fourth day, with the 10-year rate up to 2.20%. Oil prices settled higher on Wednesday, as bearish data showing U.S. supplies of crude oil rose more than expected was overshadowed by a report from the International Energy Agency estimating global oil demand this year will climb by the most since 2015. The dollar gained and gold retreated.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Wednesday told U.S. government agencies to remove Kaspersky Lab products from their networks, saying it was concerned the Moscow-based cyber security firm was vulnerable to Kremlin influence and that using its anti-virus software could jeopardize national security.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is preparing to open a 1 million square-foot warehouse near Mexico City, sources familiar with the project said, part of an effort to boost its presence in Mexico's nascent e-commerce industry.

(Reuters) - Target Corp said on Wednesday it would hire 100,000 workers for the holiday season, up 43 percent from last year, as the retailer pulls out all the stops to build on its recent uptick in sales.

LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin slid by more than 10 percent on Wednesday, as investors sold the cryptocurrency after a warning by JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon that it "is a fraud" and will eventually "blow up".

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Europe shouldn't rush to abandon the combustion engine and must build up its own production of electric car batteries to compete with China, auto suppliers and manufacturers said at the Frankfurt motor show.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tesla Inc said on Wednesday that long-time executive Diarmuid O'Connell, vice president of business development, had left after more than a decade at the electric car company.

On the heels of the release of satellite imagery showing notable instability around the site of North Korea's nuclear bomb testing facility, NBC reports that three US military officials have observed North korea moving mobile missile launchers and preapreing hard sites in the last 48 hours.

JUST IN: North Korea observed moving mobile missile launchers & preparing hard sites in last 48 hours, per 3 U.S. senior military officials

— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) September 13, 2017

This comes just hours after 38North.org exposes details new commercial satellite imagery confirms earlier 38 North analysis identifying numerous landslides throughout the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site on the slopes of Mt. Mantap (and beyond) resulting from North Korea's sixth nuclear test. These disturbances are more numerous and widespread than seen after any of the North's previous five tests, and include additional slippage in pre-existing landslide scars and a possible subsidence crater. However, it is unclear from the imagery whether this subsidence is due to what has been reported as "a cave-in that was externally observable," associated with the 4.6 magnitude event that occurred eight minutes after the test.

Yes, this time it's different: all the foundations of a healthy economy are crumbling into quicksand.

The rallying cry of Permanent Bulls is this time it's different. That's absolutely true, but it isn't bullish--it's terrifically, terribly bearish. Why is this time it's different bearish going forward? The basic answer is that nothing that is structurally broken has actually been fixed, and the policy "fixes" have fatally weakened the global financial system.

Let's go over a handful of the many ways that this time it's different, starting with the unprecedented level of central bank support of asset prices via the purchase of financial assets such as stocks and bonds.

As virtually everyone who follows finance knows, these monumental purchases have pushed bond yields / interest rates lower and stocks higher, while super-low mortgage rates have inflated a new global housing bubble that's now bigger than the previous bubble that burst with such devastating consequences.

The net consequence of this 8-year long orgy of inflating global assets has backed the central banks into a corner, as the asset bubbles demand two incompatible policies:

A new bombshell joint report issued by two international weapons monitoring groups Tuesday confirms that the Pentagon continues to ship record breaking amounts of weaponry into Syria and that the Department of Defense is scrubbing its own paper trail. On Tuesday the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) produced conclusive evidence that not only is the Pentagon currently involved in shipping up to $2.2 billion worth of weapons from a shady network of private dealers to allied partners in Syria - mostly old Soviet weaponry - but is actually manipulating paperwork such as end-user certificates, presumably in order to hide US involvement.

The OCCRP and BIRN published internal US defense procurement files after an extensive investigation which found that the Pentagon is running a massive weapons trafficking pipeline which originates in the Balkans and Caucuses, and ends in Syria and Iraq. The program is ostensibly part of the US train, equip, and assist campaign for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, a coalition of YPG/J and Arab FSA groups operating primarily in Syria's east). The arms transfers are massive and the program looks to continue for years. According to Foreign Policy's (FP) coverage of the report:

The Department of Defense has budgeted $584 million specifically for this Syrian operation for the financial years 2017 and 2018, and has ea ...

This summer, Heard on the Street's scribes pulled a seat up to the pundits' table, slapping a "buy" or "sell" on 22 investments ranging from blue chip U.S. and European stocks to entire currencies or national stock markets.

U.S. Treasurys picked up where they had left off, pushing yields lower, on Wednesday as investors continued to rotate out of government paper and other assets perceived as less risky, while traders looked ahead to consumer price data.

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